Representative Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) is pushing legislation to require licenses for handgun owners throughout the United States.
The legislation, HR 5490, is titled the “Handgun Purchaser Licensing Act.”
HR 5490 would not only require licenses but would also provide federal grants to help states cover the expense of a licensing program.
The bill is based on the inaccurate claim that “33,000 Americans were killed by guns” in 2013. Hillary Clinton made this claim again and again during her failed 2016 campaign, and Breitbart News showed that her claims actually exaggerated “gun violence” deaths by 66 percent.
In reality, the number of accidental deaths was 505, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the number of deaths due to actual “gun violence” was 11,208. The number of suicides was 21,175. When Clinton spoke, she would combine homicides, accidental deaths, and suicides as if all were the result of “gun violence” and present a death toll of 33,000. Rep. Esty is doing the same thing.
Esty’s legislation would authorize the “Attorney General … to award grants to States, units of local government, and Indian tribes for the development, implementation, and evaluation of handgun purchaser licensing requirements.” And it stipulates that such a license would only be good for five years, after which, the gun owner would have to go through a re-licensing process in order to retain his or her ability to own a handgun.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.